Should I change her diet?

[Dee]

Hi,

Penny had colitis the beginning of last week and was put on anitbiotics and a boiled rice and hamburger diet for 5 days. After the 5 days we slowly started mixing her Innova w/some raw and she seemed to handle it just fine. This morning I woke up to her gut loudly rumbling and squeeking.

I did add some canned pumpkin to her food yesterday as a filler because she needs to lose a few pounds. She eats so little that I feel horrible cutting out more of her other food. She gets 1/4 c. Innova mixed with a little raw 2x a day. When she was spayed in August she weighed a very skinny 50 lbs. but the vet said to try to keep her at that weight because it would be easier for her to get around on her 3 legs. I feel horrible about this..........but she now weighs 60 lbs.

Penny's always handled pumpkin fine so I don't know if I gave it to her too soon after her colitis or if she's beginning to have problems again and needs a diet change. Any advice or thoughts would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[StmprKB]

Are you able to feed her just RAW? Innova is rich. I have one of my bitches that always porks out on it! I LOVE THE FOOD, but it just makes her fat!

Another thing, I recently "learned' that when you mix raw and dry food, the body has a hard time deciding what to digest, or how to digest, because the RAW is digested differently then the dry, causing dietary upset. Maybe someone has better knowledge on this, but it made sense to me.

StmprKB

[Dee]

Thanks for your reply. The only reason I went back to feeding part Innova was because I wanted to make sure she was getting all the nutrients she needs (sometimes I'm a worry-wart). Although she will eat anything, I think she preferes raw. I will try going to all raw and see how it goes and also try to learn more about mixing raw and kibble. Thank you for your thoughts.....I appreciate it!

[StephanieandToby]

When Toby had colitis it was an absolute nightmare before I got control over it....I finally found a food he could tolerate (Nutro) and gave him several small meal throughout the day until he could tolerate just 2 meals/day.

I also heard you shouldn't mix raw and kibble together...but you can feed within several hours of each other..?

Very high fibre foods seemed to make Toby's Colitis worse...a kibble like Solid Gold went through him like a freight train.

[macho rottie]

Give her 2- 75 mg Zantac (no name is Ranitidine) if she has a grumbly stomach. That's what the vet prescribed for my girl.